by Randy Marker

Created on: April 19, 2009

SOAP CARVING ON A SOAP CANVAS. Everything out there today offers instruction for carving individual bars of soap, well a Soap Canvas is the next level of soap carving. It is basically a giant piece of soap mixture in a wooden frame. It allows you to carve then paint a particular subject, giving you a true 3-D piece of art, the great part it is already framed and ready to be hung on the wall or displayed on a shelf. Once you complete the carving, paint, and seal it will last forever. But I am getting ahead of myself, this is a how-to so let me get to it. At the end I'll give a link to go to to get your Soap Canvas supplies.

1. Select your subject you are going to carve. You can draw something original to paper(if you are gifted enough to draw), but the great thing about a Soap Canvas is drawing is not required. I'm not very good at drawing and could never grasp the shading required to give a picture depth, there for I use computer generated subjects that I just print to paper.

2. Once you have your subject to paper, you need to select the size of canvas you want to carve. The current sizes available are 6x12in, 8x10in, or 10x10in

3. After you have selected your canvas size, take your paper copy of your subject and examine it. Look at it 3-dimensionally, with a black sharpie, number your picture 1-4. The values will help you as a beginner to remember your height points as you carve. #1 being the lowest point in the picture(background attributes) to the highest point in the picture will be numbered #4.

3.1 You are about to begin, but before you do, the Soap Canvas factory pours the soap mixture into the wooden frame, then allows to cure for 30days, then there maybe warehouse time so before you begin carving, spray a light mist of water on the canvas to add moisture, to soften and prevent chipping. Wait about 1 hour then go to step 4 if the surface is now dry to touch.

4. Now take your subject paper and affix it with masking tape to the top of the Soap Canvas wood frame.

5. Begin tracing all detail lines of the drawing with a dull lead pencil allowing the pencil to intermittently break through as you trace. Apply enough pressure to trace into the canvas surface about the thickness of a dime. The main purpose of the tracing is to get everything sized proportionally, so if some of the finer details are hard to see at this point it's alright you can always come back to them later.

6. Once all major details are traced begin trenching out your lowest points #1's first then

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